The Trapeze of Life

At the recent Supervision course that I attended, we ended each day listening to some sort of reflection and journaling about how this related to our own life and what we were learning in the course. One evening, the reflection was from the book "Warriors of the Heart" by Danaan Parry. The whole piece is too long to share here, but I will choose an excerpt.

"Sometimes I feel that my life is a series of trapeze swings. I'm either hanging on to a trapeze bar swinging along or, for a few moments in my life, I'm hurtling across space in between bars.

Most of the time, I spend my life hanging on for dear life to my trapeze bar of the moment. It carries me along a certain steady rate of swing and I have the feeling that I'm in control of my life. I know most of the right questions and even some of the right answers. But once in a while, as I'm merrily (or not so merrily) swinging along, I look ahead of me into the distance, and what do I see? I see another trapeze bar swinging toward me. It is my next step, my growth, my aliveness coming to get me. In my heart of hearts I know that for me to grow, I must release my grip on the present well known bar to move to the next one.

Each time it happens to me, I hope (no, I pray) that I won't have to grab the new one. But in my knowing place I know that I must totally release my grasp on my old bar, and for some moment in time I must hurtle across space before I can grab onto the new bar. Each time I am filled with terror. It doesn't matter that in all my previous hurtles across the void of unknowing I have always made it. Each time I am afraid I will miss, that I will be crushed on unseen rocks in the bottomless chasm between the bars. But I do it anyway. Perhaps this is the essence of what the mystics call the faith experience. No guarantees, no net, no insurance policy, but you do it anyway because somehow, to keep hanging onto that old bar is no longer on the list of alternatives."

The reflection went on further and, when it ended, I found myself thinking, I know that space. I know what it is to fly in that void and wonder where the next bar might come from. It is a place of fear, of uncertainty, but also a space of exhilaration. I  must say though, it is not a place I want to be in often. I am very happy to be holding on to this bar for a while at least.

This space between bars, however, is the place of change and transformation. Transitions are often accompanied by feelings of being out of control, but are often the most growth-filled and expansive moments. As the reflection concluded, "Hurling through the void, we may just learn to fly."